Healing

This page answers “how do I get my health back?”. Lost hit points come back by themselves over time, and there are quicker ways too. What stops bleeding, poison, and disease is in the second section.

Getting your health back

• Wait or rest. Hit points come back by themselves, faster the tougher you are (below). Resting (b) is the quickest way to let that time pass, and you heal twice as fast while you rest.
• Drink a potion. A potion of healing, a greater one, or a potion of full healing brings hit points back at once.
• Cast a spell. Mend, Cure wounds, and Benison bring some back, and Renewal makes you heal four times as fast. On the undead they harm instead.
• Pray. A priest’s prayer mends wounds (see Prayer), and a paladin’s Lay on hands heals with zeal.
• Catch your breath. The Second wind talent gives hit points back at once.
• Find a place that heals. A healing spring may heal you when you drink at it, and in a sanctuary wounds heal three times as fast.

Curing bleeding, poison, and disease

Each of these slows or stops your healing until it ends, and each ends by itself in time (see Status effects and Diseases). To end one sooner:

• Bleeding: bind the wound with the Heal skill, drink a greater healing potion or one of full healing, or a priest’s prayer for wounds.
• Poison: a potion of antidote or of full healing, the spell Remove disease, the Heal skill (it draws out some of a dose), or a priest’s prayer against poison.
• Disease: an angelica root, a potion of cure disease, Remove disease, a temple’s cure (see Services), or a priest’s prayer against disease. The Heal skill eases one but never cures it.
• Stunned, frightened, or drowsy: a potion of clear head.
• Everything else: the “How it ends” column of the status tables lists every way to end each one.

Those born in the year of the Unicorn have Horn’s grace, which ends bleeding and poison and shakes off a disease.

How fast you heal

At the usual pace you get a hit point back every so often. The tougher you are, the faster it comes:

Exactly: a hit point every max(60, 360 − 12 × Toughness) seconds of game time, at the normal pace.

Resting, status effects, and starving (see Hunger) change the pace:

When several things change the pace at once:

• If several status effects slow your healing, only the slowest counts.
• An effect that speeds healing up (Renewal’s, four times the pace) counts only while nothing slows it.
• A disease that slows healing more than being Diseased does counts too (see Diseases).
• Resting makes up for some of it. Resting while poisoned heals at the usual pace.
• While you bleed or starve, nothing heals you, resting or not.
• In a sanctuary (a special room), wounds heal three times as fast on top of all that. This holds for anyone there, not just you.
• Magic items that speed healing (“hit points come back 50% faster”) add on top again.

The fine print

• Healing runs on game time, whatever you are doing: waiting, walking, fighting, or making a long journey on the overworld. Only the total time counts, not how it is split up.
• Progress toward the next hit point carries over from turn to turn. It is lost once you are unhurt.
• Creatures heal by the same rules, at their own Toughness, while you are on their level. They never rest.
• Some creatures regenerate. Most trolls heal four times as fast as their Toughness alone would give (the creature numbers say which ones do). This counts as a status effect that speeds healing, so anything that slows healing slows theirs too. When you see one get a tenth of its hit points back at once, you are told: The troll’s wounds close.
• Fire and acid stop all healing while they last. Nothing heals while Burning or Corroded: not a troll’s regeneration, and not yours.

Your mana comes back in the same way, paced by your Willpower.

See also Status effects and Hit points.